The internet killed AMWAY (so it gets on google nice and clear). The only people making it in AMWAY now are people from Asian speaking countries. People who have never heard of AMWAY until 10 years ago.

Yeah they just opened up a new AMWAY office across the street from my office building.

I have had friends approaching me in the past, offering "business opportunities" and "some time to hear them out" and I usually tell them point blank that I do not like networking schemes. All of them who tried recruiting me aren't my friends anymore, I felt like they were fucking users.

My gf's mom is into this stuff, Amway and a Hungo version called Oxonet, plus some water filtering thing. I'm disheartened how the brainwashing has filtered down a generation--gf believes the hype events and practically refuses to use modern medicines in favor of some cream that her mom passes off to her with all the company lines. Is this a developing market thing? Hungary would be in the same category as Asian markets that never heard of Amway 10 years ago. Another friend of ours tried to recruit me, and one of my wine salesmen is convinced that an $80/bottle of juice from a shit-smelling tropical fruit cures all ills. A recent ex- got taken by an MLM that was claiming to get her a work visa to the UK, as an au pair. The header of all the emails read, "Start your own travel business from home!" She didn't suspect a thing until i laid it out for her. Tom

These Amway things are organically perpetuated by the types of people who sign up - lazy (but greedy) people who think they can somehow strike it rich without working too hard. The irony is that if they got a proper job (even something fairly ordinary) they'd make more money (and not drag more lost souls into their vortex of marketing despair).

OP, love your story. It makes sense that a diamond AMWAY seller (those people are at the top of their game and probably actually make reasonable money) would have massive status envy at the idea of somebody more successful than him. I'm going to try this if I am ever in a similar situation.

"Oh you've got an SL500 have you? *takes a sip of wine, unimpressed* I almost considered a Mercedes but they do seem to be driven exclusively by marginally successful louts these days. *turns to walk away and says in passing* It's a shame the Bentley GT is out of your reach..."

AmWay has a large corporate building in Shanghai. Presumably, they are pulling the same cheap stunts and likely, it's easier to achieve the results over there. All this AmWay stuff reminds me of those "Learning Annex" things and that Rich Dad Poor Dad nonsense that for some reason, I get mailers for. What shoddy trash.

yup, same here. Coming into Vietnam in a big way. Have to give them credit, they seeming to do at least cursory research into everyone they are meeting here. In my case I got a Facebook message from a woman with an Indian name saying she was referred to me by an advertising agency, said she worked for a multinational firm beginning to make its entry into Vietnam. I run a PR firm, this is not an unusual sounding request for me, and I know lots of people in advertising, some of whom refer me business. There is also a very large Indian community here in advertising, so it all made sense, and I showed up at her (dingy ass) hotel at the appointed dot with my laptop in tow, and my corporate credentials presentation all ready to go. She immediately launches into a spiel about there being three types of people in the world, asked me if I had read Rich Dad Poor Dad, and I was sitting there kinda reeling, thinking 'this is the weirdest credentials presentation of my life'. It took probably 30 mins of her talking non-stop about her MBA and her incredible wealth back in Chicago until I got the gist of it...bitch wants me to sell soap for her....and if I am uber-good...recruit more peeople to sell more soap. I made my excuses and bailed, and was thankful for the only time in my life in Asia to have run out of name cards so neither her nor her associate had my number. Fast forward about three days, my gf gets a Facebook message telling her that she has been introduced by a friend in the manufacturing field and she would like to meet up with my gf to discuss her business expanding into Vietnam. My gf is an architect, with a background in industrial parks...this didnt sound out of the question to her, so in she goes...same spiel. My gf unfortunately did have namecards, and now she is In The Database, and they are calling her twice a week to set up meetings with her, and she is way too polite to use the key Amway phrases like 'fuck off and die', so the pain persists.

I've heard that these MLM's are moving into China and other developing countries. For some reason, they are also extremely popular with Mormons here in Arizona. I've been approached by a few co-workers for things like Xango (mangosteen) juice.

I've gone to two Amway presentations in my life. One was my senior year in college when a friend's father took a bunch of us to dinner and then pitched us on selling long-distance service and setting up payphone locations. Didn't realize it was Amway until about halfway into the spiel. Said, thanks but no thanks.

The other was a few years out of school, but after I'd moved back to Arizona. Got talked into checking out a business opportunity by a high school friend. I did something similar to the OP in that I went to the meeting and blew the presenters away by talking about how I knew Dick and Betsy DeVos along with Steven Van Andel fairly well from my political work and college in Michigan.

I also attended about half of a Primerica presentation back in 2002 when I still had my securities licenses and was looking for a position. I left when it became obvious they were promoting the idea that you would make more money from recruiting new sales reps rather than selling investments.

i hate these absolute-minded simple minded persons. money. it is all about money for them and nothing else. you cant even hold a normal conversation with them because everything comes down to money to them. simpletons. no one had a decent education. no one ever had held a real professional job that required any learned skills.
lot of them dont even know how to write articulately or even grammatically. these folks i am about to talk about below...

i used to have a friend who got duped by an insurance sales pyramid scheme organization called WMA.
one branch based in Monterey Park, mostly chinese reps there. but they got me to sign up and my friend.
we had to pay hundred dollars each. the guys who took us under their wing were actually pretty generous though. they knew i had no money and always treated me to lunch and one time they had a convention san jose and they took me there and gave me a hotel room (with the other guys) and free food for 3 nights.

i was miserable. the convention was just 15000 people mindlessly cheering, rallying, waving their 'sub district' flags, chanting and crap.
going out was miserable because i had no friends. my friend during that time went to escape to go skiing to lake tahoe. he was smart. so i had to sit with people who just TALKED ABOUT MONEY ALL THE TIME.

the thing that freakin did it for me was on the long bus trip back...

they wanted everyone to line up and one by one go to the front and share their experience about the convention. lot of tears, cheers, high fives, etc.

one old man, went up and after his stupid emotional story, he exclaimed,

"In this life, your friends can leave you, your family can leave you... BUT MONEY ALWAYS STAYS GREEN!!!"
I was like, what the fu--? everybody started cheering and tearing up.
i was ready to murder everyone.

Right out of college I got tricked into going to a presentation by a cult leader, and it was a lot like these Amway meetings sound. It was a group called the American Buddhist Church, the leader was a white guy, a former psychotherapist I think, who called himself "Rama".

He had a very strange take on Buddhism, that didn't fit with much of what I knew about it beforehand. He talked a lot about how materialism is not incompatible with spiritualism, using himself as the exemplar: he bragged about his Mercedes and his American Express card, and how he could achieve enlightenment while also embracing the pursuit and trappings of wealth.

I almost laughed when he said he was levitating, but those of us who hadn't started our spiritual path couldn't perceive it.

I later learned that the American Buddhist Church combines the People's Temple with Amway: recruits to the church were given training in programming software and then sent out to do contract work as developers while most of their earnings were funneled back into the church.

Finally there was the inevitable cult scandal, in this case "Rama" was implicated in the suspicious death of a follower, and Rama himself died under mysterious circumstances, possibly as part of a suicide pact.

Anyway, almost 20 years on it stands out in memory as a truly bizarre experience. As you can see I've kept track of the group ever since.